Laura Smith Haviland (fondly referred to locally as "Aunt Laura") was a woman whose life's work revolved around advocating for others. She viewed it as both an obligation and a calling. "Whatever privilege … I claim for myself, I claim for every other human being in the universe, of whatever nation or color," she once said.
Throughout much of her 89 years, she selflessly served those who were enslaved, those who society perceived as lacking worth, and those who were left to fend for themselves without bootstraps by which to pull themselves up. She was an abolitionist, a suffragette, and a social reformer.
Laura Smith was born on December 20, 1808, in Kitley Township, Leeds County, Canada West (now Ontario), to Quaker parents, Daniel Smith and Asenath "Sene" Blancher, who had immigrated from the United States shortly before her birth. She was an inquisitive and spiritual girl who was taught at home to read and write. In 1815, when Smith was still a young child, the family returned to the States, taking up residence in Cambria in Western New York.
While Smith's spirituality informed much of her life's pursuits, she would sometimes find herself at odds with her Quaker faith. Regardless of some of her "un-Quakerlike" experiences, though, she would always have a deep and personal relationship with God.
On November 11, 1825, Laura Smith married Charles Haviland in Lockport, New York. Four years later, they settled in Raisin, Lenawee County, in the then Michigan territory. It was not long before Laura became active in the fight against slavery.
In 1832, she and others living in the Raisin community helped Elizabeth Chandler organize the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society. It was the first anti-slavery organization in Michigan. During that time, Raisin was a center of abolitionist activity because of its proximity to the Ohio border and to Detroit.
In 1837, Laura and Charles established a school for "poor house" children. The Raisin Institute taught basic literacy and religion, as well as farming to the boys and homemaking skills to the girls.
The Institute admitted any child of good character, regardless of race, religion, gender, or patrimony, becoming the first integrated school in Michigan. As expected, their practice of admitting Black children was full-throatily opposed by both their neighbors and the government. But the Havilands persisted, and the pupils in their care learned to get along and to accept their differing racial identities.
The Raisin Institute was also considered to be the best teacher-training school in Michigan, implementing the Oberlin plan (from the Oberlin Institute, now Oberlin College, in Ohio) to train future teachers.
By 1845, the Haviland family had grown to include eight children. In the spring of that year, however, they would suffer grave loss, as an epidemic of erysipelas spread through the region and claimed the lives of Charles, their youngest child, Laura's parents, and her sister Phebe. Two years later, Laura would experience the loss of her eldest child as well.
Still, even in the face of overwhelming tragedy and having narrowly escaped death herself, Laura proceeded with her abolitionist work. Laura's home became a safe house for escaping slaves, though she would often find herself cursed at and threatened by slave hunters, known as "patrollers." In fact, at one point during her career as an Underground Railroad "conductor," a $3,000 bounty was placed on her head.
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required runaway enslaved people to be returned to their owners, even if they were found in free states, and imposed penalties on those who aided their escape, forced abolitionists to increase their efforts to help "self-freed" (as Laura would call fugitive slaves) people make their escape to Canada. Laura, herself, would face prosecution but manage to evade legal punishment — thanks to a judge who was sympathetic toward abolitionists.
Eventually, the Raisin Institute became financially unstable, and Laura closed its doors. She put her newly found free time to use by helping to start a school in Toledo, Ohio, to educate free and self-freed Blacks. She and her daughter Anna both worked as instructors at the school. She followed that up in 1851 by spending a year working to establish the Refugee Home Society in Windsor, Canada, and she stayed on there as the settlement teacher.
In 1856, she returned to Raisin and was able to reopen her Institute after raising sufficient funds. It would eventually close again, however.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Laura switched gears and volunteered to care for soldiers as a nurse, assisting and advocating for prisoners of war. One example of Laura's continued passion for helping those being mistreated was her actions on behalf of the 3,000 Union soldiers that were imprisoned at Ship Island, a military prison near the Union-controlled port and city of New Orleans. She fought to get these soldiers, who were being held in poor conditions for minor offenses, freed by advocating her way up the army chain of command. She was successful and the soldiers were released and returned to their regimens.
Her work as a nurse was necessary and her services were in demand, but at her core she remained committed to fighting slavery.
In 1865, General Oliver O. Howard, the commissioner of the newly created Freedmen's Bureau, named Laura inspector of hospitals. She spent two years traveling through Virginia, Kansas, and Washington, D.C., distributing supplies, organizing refugee camps, establishing schools, and volunteering as a nurse in freedmen's hospitals.
After the Civil War ended, the Freedmen's Aid Commission acquired the former Raisin Institute and renamed it the Haviland Home. They converted it into an orphanage for Black children. It initially housed 75 homeless children whom Haviland had brought from Kansas. As the number of children at the orphanage increased, many white taxpayers, who felt Haviland was burdening them, demanded that the Haviland Home be closed. The protest reached a fever pitch in 1867, when the American Missionary Association purchased the orphanage, closed it, and threw out the orphans.
Laura was working in Washington, D.C., at the time but returned to Michigan to help the impacted children. She managed to purchase the orphanage and run it herself. But, by 1870, she was in dire straits. And, at her urging, the state took it over, renaming it the Michigan Orphan Asylum.
That setback would not deter Laura from continuing her advocacy work and from speaking truth to power — including to the powerful in Washington, D.C. — in support of the causes in which she so passionately believed.
As she was closing in on the final years of what was a remarkable and meaningful life's journey, she penned her autobiography, "A Woman's Life-Work."
Laura Smith Haviland died on April 20, 1898, in Grand Rapids. She is buried in Raisin Valley Cemetery in Adrian, next to Charles. Befitting her legacy, both the choir that sang at her service and the pallbearers chosen to carry her casket were integrated.
After her passing, accolades would come Laura's way.
A statue honoring her, which was originally erected in front of Adrian City Hall in 1909, now stands in front of the Lenawee County Historical Museum.
More recently, she was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame & Museum in Peterboro, New York, on October 20, 2018, along with Frances E.W. Harper and Reverend Samuel May.
And she was forever stamped in history when the U.S. Postal Service launched stamps honoring "the shining beacons of the underground railroad" and included her among them. The stamps were issued on March 9, 2024, to shine a light on the "courageous men and women who helped guide enslaved people to freedom via the Underground Railroad network of secret routes and safehouses in use before the Civil War."
Aunt Laura is remembered as a woman whose convictions to freedom, equity, and humane treatment for every person dictated her choices in life. Over the years, she would join with peers, including Elizabeth Comstock, Elizabeth Chandler, and Susan B. Anthony, in the fight for other's rights as well as for their own.
Throughout history, there have been countless examples of marginalized individuals seeking others on the margins and pulling them into the safe space they are working to create. And it serves us well to remember their strength, wisdom, and sacrifice.
